Thanks for Asking, Ande

Ande of Knit and the City went out of her way to express interest in the current condition of Sven, my Volvo, and my front porch. Sven has a new ignition coil, which was my mechanic's next guess after the fuel relay. If Sven has a relapse, we'll try something else. Eek. I drive with eyes peeled for likely places to pull out of traffic on short notice. Keeps one alert.

Porchwise, I'm more than halfway finished painting the white, vertical stuff : railings and lattice, it takes forever, it makes you crazy, these little bits, all corners, all edges. Then I can do the floor in an hour or two. The effort resumes this weekend, when the temps are no longer expected to be near 100.

The shawl progresses. No one is more surprised than I. There's also a sock in the works, because I get to change one color every four rows. Quite takes my breath away. The pattern is the Zigzag Socks from Vogue Knitting Socks. I'm using Jawoll instead of the Wildfoote called for. I've wanted to start these for years, but an embarrassing incident, to be chronicled in the next post, has held me back.

Janet Evanovich has a new Stephanie Plum novel out. There's always one passage in each book that makes me quite helpless with laughter. I thought I had found it while sitting at dinner - I had to push my plate away and put my head down on the table. But yesterday, at work, as I walked from the lunchroom to the timeclock, a sentence caught me offguard and I nearly fell to my knees. It takes all my self-control not to tell you what it was.

Ande! Congratulations on the promotion!